the generals, Lee and Meade, was greater than could be bridged by
twenty thousand men. For three days the battle raged. No other
battle of recent time has been so obstinate and so bloody. The
victorious Union army lost a greater percentage in killed and
wounded than the allied armies of England, Germany, and the
Netherlands lost at Waterloo. Four of its seven corps suffered
each a greater relative loss than befell the world-renowned
British infantry on the day that saw the doom of the French
emperor. The defeated Confederates at Gettysburg lost,
relatively, as many men as the defeated French at Waterloo; but
whereas the French army became a mere rabble, Lee withdrew his
formidable soldiery with their courage unbroken, and their
fighting power only diminished by their actual losses in the
field.

The decisive moment of the battle, and perhaps of the whole war,
was in the afternoon of the third day, when Lee sent forward his
choicest troops in a last effort to break the middle of the Union
line. The center of the attacking force was Pickett's division,
the flower of the Virginia infantry; but many other brigades took
part in the assault, and the column, all told, numbered over
fifteen thousand men. At the same time, the Confederates attacked
the Union left to create a diversion. The attack was preceded by
a terrific cannonade, Lee gathering one hundred and fifteen guns,
and opening a fire on the center of the Union line. In response,
Hunt, the Union chief of artillery, and Tyler, of the artillery
reserves, gathered eighty guns on the crest of the gently sloping
hill, where attack was threatened. For two hours, from one till
three, the cannonade lasted, and the batteries on both sides
suffered severely. In both the Union and Confederate lines